Queenless hive from a cutout

In the 2004 hurricane season a tall palm in a residential back yard located in southern Martin county succumbed to the tortuous winds.  Over the years following the storms the telephone like tree stump was visited by insects that bored into it's surface and then birds that foraged on the insects.  Eventually there were large enough holes in the tree that accommodated the nesting of a family of wood ducks.  Following the wood ducks a swarm of honey bees moved into the tree.  On September 24th the bees swarmed and alighted in a nearby tree temporarily until eventually flying off in search of a new home.  The following day the standing stump that was once a majestic palm tree fell splitting open and spilling comb and the remaining portion of the honey bee colony on to the ground.  I received a call from the home owner asking if it would be possible to move the bees into a hive box and manage them.  I agreed to check out the situation and make an evaluation.  It was obvious at first glance that the colony would not survive for long in its present state.  I pulled out my equipment and proceeded to collect the bees using a homemade version of Robo's World Bushkill Bee Vac.  I collected most of the bees after over an hour of vacuuming then proceeded to cut the remaining comb out of the split tree.  I like to salvage any comb with brood if possible to give the bees something to do in their new home but in this case the infestation of small hive beetles made it impossible to salvage very much comb.
The chance of collecting the queen in a cutout such as this, is very hit or miss.  I usually set the bees up in a hive box and then leave them alone for two to three weeks.  When I checked the hive after this waiting period I knew something was wrong when I only saw drone brood.

Upon closer inspecton I noticed what I had only read about; multiple eggs in many of the cells.  This is an indication of a laying worker bee.  In an attempt to salvage the hive a worker will take over the duties of the missing queen by laying eggs.  Unfortunately the worker was never mated so all the eggs that hatch and mature into an adult will be drones.

 It's interesting to see in some of the cells that had multiple eggs more than one larvae hatched.  Two or more larvae developing in the same cell quickly consume all the royal jelly and bee bread placed in the cell by the nurse bees.  It's unlikely that two pupae would develope from a single cell.

The only recourse I had was to combine the bees from this cut out hive with another existing hive in my apiary.

Bee removal from a cable junction box.

I recently worked on removing bees from a cable television junction box.  I checked out the site ahead of the actual removal and it didn't appear to be that big of a hive.

Cover over a cable television junction box.

I removed the cover and found the inside filled with comb and bees.

I worked for three hours cutting out five frames of brood comb, scooping up handfuls of bees and vacuuming the remaining bees into the two nucleus boxes using my BushKill Farms design bee vacuum.

I set the hive up in my apiary and by the next morning the bees were swarming and had covered the outside of the hive box.  I scooped them up and poured them into a set of two eight frame medium boxes that contained new foundation and a frame of uncapped brood from one of my other hives.  I placed a queen excluder just above the bottom board to keep the queen in, if there is one, and I stuffed grass in the opening to keep the rest of the bees in the hive until they get used to their new home.  I also gave them some sugar water in a Boardman entrance feeder to further entice them to stay put.

Re-queening

I have had two hives that have been very crabby for the last few months and two hives that were either cut-outs or swarms.  These four hives were do for queen replacement.  I picked up four mated queens from a local commercial queen breeder on Saturday morning, May 21st then proceeded to re-queen the hives on Saturday late after noon.

A new queen packed in a small cage is visited by bees from my apiary.

The first step to re-queening is to locate the existing queen and crush her leaving her either on the bottom board or the entrance to the hive so her hive mates know they are queenless.  The lack of queen pheromone in the hive alerts the workers that their queen is missing.

Workers examine the remains of their queen on the entrance to their hive.

This queen had fallen to the ground and is surrounded by her daughters.

The caged queen has a candy plug that the workers must chew through in order to release the new queen form her cage.  A small hole is made in the candy to shorten the time needed for the workers to chew through the candy.  The cage is then wedged between two frames and the hive closed up.  In one to two days the workers will have released the queen.  Check back on the hive in three days to ensure they did release her.  If they accept their new queen she should be laying eggs before a week has passed.  Checking for larvae on the frames will let you know whether she has commenced laying or not.

I was only able to find two of the four queens before light started to fail so I had to re-queen the remaining two hives the following morning.

Searching each of the boxes in one of my hives trying to locate the queen so she can be removed before re-queening.

043011 Visit to an apiary.

I recently had an opportunity to visit an apiary in Palm Beach County with some members of the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association.  There were about 15 hives on this five acre parcel that housed pigs, wild hog, a turkey, horses and a cow.  The hives were mostly nucleus hives (five frame) that were made to be sold at a recent conference.  The condition of the hives varied from frames of capped and uncapped brood with honey, nectar, and pollen to weak hives overrun with small hive beetles.

 Beginning beekeepers were given the opportunity to open a hive and examine frames of brood.

On one of the frames you can see where the bees exercised some of their creativity and built some comb in front of the foundation comb.  You can even see a queen cell along the edge of the comb which may indicate the hive is preparing to swarm or replace their queen through a process called supercedure.  You want to manage your hives in a manner that reduces the circumstances for swarming and you should replace your queens on a regular basis (every six months to a year) with a queen of known lineage so you always have a strong laying queen.

The next hive we examined had several pupa on the landing board which indicated something was very wrong with this hive.  When we removed the cover we saw a preponderance of small hive beetles.  Chris immediately went to work squishing the beetles with a hive tool.  It gives you some satisfaction that you are doing something but in the case of this hive it is just a drop in the bucket.

The comb was covered with small hive beetles.  If you look at this frame all of the dark spots on the lower portion of the frame is a small hive beetle.  The beetles defacate on the honey and cover the frames with a slime coating making it unusable for the honey bees and the beekeeper.

When a hive gets this infested there is little you can do but shake the bees off onto the ground and cut the comb off of the frames.  We captured the queen in a queen clip and placed her in a new nuc box with the empty frames.  You can see the bees marching  up a makeshift ramp to get back into the box with their queen.

Being vigilant with performing hive inspections ervery one to two weeks, keeping your hives strong, and your bee yard clean can help to prevent the out of control conditions depicted here.  Old comb and propolis scraped from the hive should not be left in the yard around your hives.  This material attracts the very pests you are trying to avoid.

2011 Master Beekeeper program and Univ. of Florida Bee College

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the 2011 Bee College in Marineland, Florida.  This is a two day conference dealing with beginning and advanced classes in beekeeping and honey bee biology.  Preceding the class is a half day review for the Master Beekeeper Program followed by examinations for the Aprentice, Advanced, and Master Beekeeper levels.  I passed the Apprentice level in October and thus have to wait one year before sitting for the Advanced exam but I attended the review classes in order to garner a little extra knowledge.  Two of the members of the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association, of which I am affiliated with, passed the exam they sat for.  Also we had one member qualify for the Welsh Honey Judge class.
The bee college included a honey competition, which I entered some extracted honey and a photograph.

My extracted honey entry is the second set to the right of those entrys with ribbons.  This was the first contest I have entered, also it is the first honey I extracted, so I wasn't surprised or disappointed at not capturing a ribbon.

I thought my photograph would have attracted some attention.  I entered the infrared picture of a brood box (second image from left) that shows a bee cluster maintaining 93 degrees Farenheit observed in a hive in Ambler, Pennsylvania at Temple Univerity in April 2010.

This is a closeup of the thermogram I entered.  The white or yellow areas are warm and the purple or blue areas are cool.  This picture was taken in Pennsylvania in April but a similar phenomenom can be seen in Florida in February when I took th photo below.

This thermogram demostrates how the warmth of the brood chamber is concentrated in one area of the center of the hive in order to keep the queen and all of the workers warm throughout the winter.  This heat signature was radiating right through the wood side of the hive box.  The two bright white spots at the entrance of the hive are individual bees.  I am hoping dispalying these pictures will give someone an idea of how this technology could be used to help the Beekeeping industry.

Cutouts and swarms

I recently got a call from a friend that he had some bees in the water meter outside his house.  So I went over there Saturday morning all suited up ready to do battle.  I puffed some smoke into the small opening in the water meter cover then carefully lifted the cover exposing the hive.  It turned out to be three small pieces of newly drawn comb and about 300 bees.  There was a queen present so I cut the come out and placed it into Langstroth frames in a medium size hive box.  I left the hive on the ground next to the water meter and returned after midnight to pick up the hive when I was sure all of the bees were inside.  The following day I wanted to transfer the bees to a nucleus hive box, add a coupe frames of nurse bees and brood from an existing hive and effectively have a new hive.  To gain more experience with handling queens, I scooped the queen from this feral hive into a small cylinder used for marking and clipping the queen.  I didn’t have any luck clipping the queens' wings but I did manage to rile her up with my manipulations.  I decided to just transfer her into a queen cage so she would be protected from the nurse bees from my other hives that I was going to combine her with.  I have never placed a queen in a cage before and I was taking much too long for her liking.  After about the third attempt she escaped and started flying around the bee yard.  She made a few passes beneath the nucleus hive I was setting up and then I lost track of her.  I waited to see if she would join her hive mates who were crowded in the corner of the nucleus hive but I never saw her return.  I then realized that she may have flown over to the other hives in the yard so I checked them out and sure enough there was the queen on the top of one of my other hives and with five bees on top of her stinging her to death.  Having lost the queen I just joined the remaining bees to an existing hive using the newspaper technique of isolating the bee box form the established hive with a sheet of newspaper that the bees will eventually chew through.

I had some redemption from my chance to increase my bee yard three days later when I went on a call to retrieve some feral bees from a flower pot.  When I arrived I was told the bees swarmed the day before.  Having driven quite a distance I was discouraged to think I had lost the opportunity to capture the bees until the homeowner pointed out a branch in their hedge where a nice ball of bees rested.  I quickly changed my focus from the flower pot, which still had some bees leaving and entering through the drain hole, and moved over to the hedge with a bucket and lid.  A few firm taps on the branch the bees rested on and I had about three pounds of bees in my bucket.

I transferred the flower pot to an outstretched sheet, pulled up the four corners like a diaper and tied the loose ends with rope to prevent the bees trapped in the flower pot and sheet from escaping.

So my feral hive rescue turned into a two-for-one.  I have begun feeding the two rescued hives to encourage them to stay put and make my apiary their new home.

Feral Hive removal

While sponsoring the Florida State Beekeepers Association Summer Fling 2010, held at the Pine Jog Environmental Center, the Palm Beach County Beekeepers were asked to remove a feral hive from the elementary school next door.  The hive was nestled amongst some trees about seven feet off the ground. 

 
After trimming away branches surrounding the feral hive the branch that supports the hive was cut and the entire hive lowered into two-deep hive boxes. 

Dowels were driven through the two sides of the box and impaled the hive to give the comb support during transport.

The feral hive in their new home was then moved next door to the Environmental Center.  Feburary 3rd, 2011 we finally got around to opening the hive back up and transferred the comb to medium frames.

Rather than support the feral comb in the frames with rubber bands I take a standard unassembled medium frame and run each of the four sides through a band saw to split each of the four pieces in half.  I drill three small holes down the outer edge of each side piece then assemble each half and join the two halves by stapling a small piece of leather to the bottom for a hinge.  I then string 20# test fishing line through the three holes on each side of the frame to support the comb.  The comb is trimmed to fit the medium frames and laid onto one half of the frame which is then closed like a clam shell.  A staple near each end of the top bar holds the two halves of the frame together. In a short period of time the bees will attach the loose comb to the frame and repair any cells crushed during the transfer.

During the transfer of the comb to the Langstroth frames the bees found my veil and bee suit attractive.

End-grain Cutting Boards

One of the wood working projects that has been very popular among friends and family has been end-grain cutting boards.  This board was a gift to my sister.  It was a challenge to construct since it exceeded the capacity of some of my wood working tools.  The design is always unique but the plan was found in a Wood magazine article (October 2006). 



In response, my sister made me a quilt using a similar cutting board pattern modeled here by our cat Hunter.



The last board I made was returned due to a crack that developed between some of the laminates.

I'm not sure why this board began to split but I believe it was due to skimping on the glue (Titebond II) .  It is possible that I didn't let the wood acclimate to my shop temperature and humidity before cutting the four quarter stock into the pieces used in the construction.



This is the cutting board during glue-up of the pieces.  I believe their was adequate pressure applied to the laminates during glue-up but it is possible I didn't use enough glue.



I plan to start over from scratch and use more glue on the next cutting board.

January 12, 2011

One of the pests of beehives in south Florida are the marine toads, Bufo marinas.  These toads can get as big as a dinner plate and they have a voracious appetite.  Many people find them munching on their pets dog food if the food bowl is left out of doors.
In a bee hive the toad will sit by the hive entrance and consume mass quantities of foraging bees entering or leaving the hive.  The picture below depicts a dissected toad where I found the remains of 45 bees in its stomach.

One means of defense against the marine toad is elevating your hives to get out of their reach.  This helps but the toads have been found on top of 55 gallon drums so it isn't a complete solution.  I keep my hives on top of three cinder blocks as a precaution.

 Check your bee yard after dark when the toads come out to feed to determine if marine toads are a problem in your area.  If you find them capture them and dispose of them before they decimate your hives.

January 8th, 2011 Hive Inspection

Had an opportunity to go into my hives today since the sun was out and it was 74 degrees F.  I was pleased to see nectar stored in one hive and capped honey in all three hives.  The hive I obtained from a cutout was beginning to build new comb on top of their original comb.  They never seem to build comb where I want them to build comb.  You can see the small piece of burr comb halfway doen the the left side of the frame which is the top of the frame.

The bees started to climb out on top of the frames in the super to investigate what I was doing. 

I have been feeding this hive since the end of November and I gave them a frame of capped honey from one of my other hives in December.  There were small hive beetles on the capped honey when I inspected the hive today bet they were not in such great numbers that I found it necessary to bring out my small hive beetle vacuum trap.  I'll look in on them again next weekend weather permitting.

The Master Beekeeping Program March 10th, 2011 and Bee college March 11th and 12th, 2011 will be held in Marineland Florida.  These are two great programs presented by the Univeristy of Florida Honey Bee Research and Evaluation Lab http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/honeybee/  Check out their web site and register for the two programs if you can be in north Florida on those dates.